Swish: 250 Pages of Emails
Right into the newshole.
Last night, I received a flag of this AP story via a TruthOut.org email update:
White House ‘Discovers’ 250 Emails Related to Plame Leak
The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.
The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.
Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status to reporters.
This is a major revelation that links back to several points in the Plame affair, not the least of which is (potentially) the 12-hour headstart Alberto Gonzales (then acting as counsel) gave to the White House when the “preserve all documents” directive was initiated from the CIA’s Plame investigation in 2003.
Yet today, more than 15 hours later, it doesn’t come up in a search of the New York Times, the LA Times, CNN.com, the Post, or any other major news service.
Only the Raw Story and TruthOut are giving the thread (which was buried in the next-to-last paragraph of the AP story) front-page/breaking news play.
If this were 1996, there would be live news teams standing outside the White House speculating about the psychological turmoil that must be taking place inside. Instead, this disappears right down the Friday night newshole. Next week we may see peripheral treatment of the newly discovered emails in various Libby updates. If it becomes a major issue, that will be a sign of a press corps recovering a sense of its mission. If not, it’s merely (more) evidence that the Washington media double standard remains in effect.
May 7, 2006 at 10:25 am
[...] Remember the 250 pages of emails that nobody reported on back in February? Don’t worry if you don’t. A lot of people are having trouble with their memories these days. Last Question Is Obstruction for Fitzgerald, Rove By Jason Leopold t r u t h o u t | Report Sunday 07 April 2006 [...]